Russia's Power Politics, 1914-Style

There is no reason on God’s green earth why Russia and the United States should ever come to blows.

On the other hand, in 1914 there was no reason why Russia, France and England should have to have gone to war with Germany and Austria-Hungary. No reason except the insanity of power politics as practiced before the Great War. It was the sheer purposelessness of the struggle, the insanity of it all, that was the most demoralizing aspect of the Great War.

After two world wars and the Cold War, our European cousins are very keen on "soft power;" getting things done by diplomacy, persuasion and moral force. It worked for a while and then reality set in, first in the former Yugoslavia and now in Georgia. Now power politics, 1914-style, is back in vogue. Here's why:

Russia has grievances against us that won’t go away. In the 1980's we blocked the Soviet expansion into Afghanistan by arming the Mujahideen. Once they learned how to shoot down Hind helicopters with Sparrow air-to-air missiles it was only a matter of time. We also lured the Soviets into an arms race they didn’t need --or could afford-- to pursue in the 1980’s. When we tossed in the Star Wars chip, they had a breakdown of national will because they utterly believed we could build a system that would negate their intercontinental rocket forces.

Fooled ya! We’re still trying to make the damn thing work 20 years later. It was Ronald Reagan’s coup de grace to the back of the head of communism.

Instead of propping up the USSR in gratitude for being liberated 60 years earlier, the ungrateful eastern European satellite nations gleefully quit the Warsaw Pact. Now they are mostly members of NATO and the European Union and out of Moscow’s grasp. The fact that the presidents of Poland and the Balkan nations dared travel to Tiblisi in the middle of the war, to proclaim solidarity in public with Georgia indicates enormous moral courage –and the knowledge that their security is America’s direct concern.

Except for recently, with the fighting in Georgia, the Russian public regards the United States the Number One Enemy. Russians, from the man in the street to the ex-KGB operative who manipulates the president of Russia like a marionette—they all long for the days when a threat from Russia made the United States and the West tremble.

They long for the days when, in what they call the “near abroad,” the leaders of nations on the Soviet periphery phoned Moscow to check in before making a rest room visit. They don’t just miss the respect the mighty Soviet Union generated; they miss the fear the USSR inspired. Bullying is a part of Russian life, families, neighborhoods, schools, even the armed forces, are riddled with bullies.

Vladimir Putin is an old-time KGB bully.

Putin believes in the power of the bully. Disgusted after the Chechin terrorist attack on a grade school and subsequent massacre, Putin noted darkly that in this world, “The weak are to be beaten.”

Georgia was made an example of because it was weak. Weakness inspires contempt in Russia. More than the so-called provocations in South Ossetia (really stirred up by the Russians themselves), more than siding with the United States, Georgia’s major crime was to be weak. The Russian instinct, when presented with the face of a homeless, helpless, weeping civilian, is to smash that contemptible face in with the heel of a jackboot, as Orwell said, forever and ever.

Having beaten Georgia on the battlefield, Russia now wishes to humiliate her. Again and again. In the past week the Kremlin announced, “Georgian territorial integrity is a dead issue.” Russian soldiers are acting in accord with that statement, robbing everything of value they can get their hands on and digging in on Georgian national territory, despite the promise from Moscow that they were leaving.

We are flying in humanitarian supplies and, I hope, weapons to rearm Georgian soldiers and militia. We are going to have to stand beside our friends when their noses are bloodied because they are our friends, and especially because they are weak. In this world, Americans believe, the strong help the weak, whatever the risk.

Russia is richer than ever in its history thanks to energy revenues. It has all the land it can use and all the raw materials. They simply aspire to smash a few faces from time to time as their God-given right and to scare the rest of the world.

Which leads me to a question. Of the two, who is best suited to deal with Fascist Russia? Barack Obama, or John McClain? This is turning out to be much more important a presidential election than we had dreamed just 14 days ago.